Innovation award handed to Zuckerberg

Zuckerberg has been handed the award for his work in popularising social networks – although you could suggest that the lion's share of his work in this area happened years ago.

Nonetheless, Zuckerberg has been handed the accolade for creating a site in 2004 that now boasts over 300 million active users.

Zuckerberg will be handed the gong at an event at the end of October, following in the footsteps of the likes of prior winners Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.

Challenging convention

"Challenging conventional thinking to solve problems in bold new ways has been an important part of Facebook's success, and I'm honoured and humbled to receive this reward in recognition," said Zuckerberg.

"We'll continue to build on our hacker culture to push technical boundaries and create new and elegant solutions to make the world more open and connected."